According to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 48% See Government Today As A Threat to Individual Rights. But that isn't about to get in the way of the Beltway policy wonks.
The Emerging Republican Minority
The Center for American Politics' Ruy Teixeira, one of the top political demographers in the country, has a new paper out in which he examines the two major party coalitions, with a focus on the current and future prospects of the Republican Party. For the GOP, says Teixeira, things look grim, in large part because the country is becoming less white and more educated. He provides specific data showing how college educated voters are growing, and non-college educated shrinking, as shares of the electorate; likewise for the growing non-white v. shrinking white populations.
"The Democratic Party will become even more dominated by the emerging constituencies that gave Barack Obama his historic 2008 victory, while the Republican Party will be forced to move toward the center to compete for these constituencies. As a result, modern conservatism is likely to lose its dominant place in the GOP," he writes, adding that "the Republican Party as currently constituted is in need of serious and substantial changes in approach."
Specifically, he recommends that the GOP do some or all of the following (taken verbatim from the report):
*Move to the center on social issues.
*Pay attention to whites with some college education and to young white working-class voters in general.
*Another demographic target should be white college graduates, especially those with a four-year degree only.
*In the long run the GOP has to have serious solutions of its own that go beyond cutting taxes.
What's interesting to me about most of Teixeira's suggested changes is that the GOP is either not doing them, or doing something close to the opposite. If anything, the opposite is happening. Indeed, the single biggest storyline of the past year for conservatives and the Republican Party is the rise of the tea party protest movement.
Ruy Teixeira's analysis paints quite a different picture regarding the direction the Republican Party should take versus what we're seeing in the real world. The Tea Parties are proving to be highly influential, and looking at the recent primary results, Americans seem to be making bold, pro-libertarian moves towards limited government. For example:
- Rand Paul (R) for Senate in Kentucky
- Sharron Angle (R) for Senate in Nevada
- Chris Christie (R) Governor of New Jersey
- Nikki Haley (R) for Governor of South Carolina
- Mike Oliverio (D) for Congress in West Virginia (ibertarian/conservative)
Also, Rory Reid (D), who's running for governor of Nevada, just ran his first campaign ad without using his last name! Obviously, he's hoping to avoid being linked to his father, Senator Harry Reid (D), who's pushed through some of the most expansive legislation in our nation's history. If that doesn't tell you how unpopular Big Government is, I don't know what can.
It's easy to blow these primary wins off as situational and unique to the times, but that's always true of elections. Each cycle brings its own set of circumstances. Remember too, Republicans aren't very popular either, so what's going on isn't a Red Team vs. Blue Team phenomena, but an ideological battle over the direction of our country.
I don't buy into all the demographics modelling either. After all, we don't live in hives (at least most of us). Besides, demographic data simply isn't enough to provide answers concerning our economy which is on the verge of collapse, the unsustainable federal debt, or the sky high unemployment that keeps climbing.
Times are changing. Yesterday's methods of analysis don't work anymore. Race-based politics are out, and "Small-government insurgents may save the GOP."
